This is an important discussion that has been going on in disparate places, but primarily at the moment is on the Open Science mailing list maintained by the OKF (see here for an archive of the relevant thread). To try and keep things together and because Yishay Mor asked, I thought I would try to summarize the current state of the debate.

The issue of licensing arrangements and best practice for making data available has been brewing for some time but has just recently come to a head. John Wilbanks and Science Commons have a reasonably well established line that they have been developing for some time. Michael Nielsen has a recent blog post and Rufus Pollock, of the Open Knowledge Foundation, has also just synthesised his thoughts in response into a blog essay.

The Open Knowledge Foundation is running a workshop on finding and re-using open science resources. More details are available on the okf blog and wiki. I will be there along with a number of more interesting and important people. Come along and contribute to the discussion of how we can use what’s out there and how we can get a lot more of it.